CNAPP vs CSPM

Cloud security risks are increasingly common as enterprises run 20% more workloads in the cloud than they did just two years ago. And it’s not just increased cloud usage that heightens risk: poor authentication practices, insecure APIs, privilege escalation, and misconfigurations all create growing opportunities for bad actors to exploit cloud environments. 

With the increasingly complex attack surface, numerous tools have risen to the forefront of cloud security – including cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP) and cloud security posture management (CSPM). In this article, we will break down the key benefits of both, as well as key differences.

The Rising Age of Consolidation 

CSPM and CNAPP both manage risk in cloud environments but take different approaches and have different scopes. CSPMs can either be a stand-alone tool, or a focused tool within a CNAPP which manages misconfiguration prevention, detection, and remediation to ensure compliance. CNAPPs on the other hand, are a broad-scope platform that includes runtime protection, visibility, and vulnerability management in addition to CSPM features.

As a category, CSPM first appeared in 2014 to meet the needs of securing increasingly popular infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings. Early offerings focused on governance and detecting misconfigurations. 

Later, as innovations to protect workload gained traction, CNAPP emerged to cover combined needs in a new category. CNAPP is a newcomer that has enabled the consolidation of CSPM tools and the visibility they offer, with workload protection tools and entitlement management. 

Today, companies often purchase CSPM as part of a CNAPP, as part of a trend toward synchronizing cybersecurity tools into a single platform, an evolution crucial to filling holes in security across processes, clouds, and systems. 

Benefits of CNAPP and CSPM for Cybersecurity

Cloud security tools are rapidly evolving in order to keep pace with accelerated changes in cloud adoption and usage. Meanwhile, cloud usage continues to rise with 75% of tech leaders building all new products and features in the cloud, and almost 50% of companies saying they’re cloud-native or fully cloud-enabled.

Consequently, cloud security is changing, too. It’s the fastest-growing segment in information security and the top spending priority, highlighting the reality that the cloud poses unique vulnerabilities that can mean greater risk for data stored there, including denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattacks. 

From 2022 to 2023, there was a 75% increase in cloud environment intrusions.

CSPM Reduces Attack Risks

CSPM reduces exposure to these threats since identity and credential misconfigurations are responsible for 80% of exposures in the cloud environment, with 33% of those putting critical assets at risk. 

With the average financially-motivated breach costing $46,000 per incident, reducing misconfigurations can significantly lower the cost of breaches. CSPM identifies common access-related misconfigurations, such as overly permissive roles and improper access controls.

CNAPP Adds Workload Protection for Comprehensive Coverage

With CSPM, DevSecOps teams have already integrated security in the earliest phases. With CNAPP, they build on that foundation, embedding security throughout the application lifecycle from development through deployment and runtime.

CNAPP can tell organizations more about their potential threats than CSPM alone since it incorporates components of the cloud infrastructure across the lifetime of apps with access management, vulnerability management, and threat detection.

What are the Features of CSPM?

CSPM is a cloud security tool focused on managing the security posture of cloud environments. Key points include:

• CSPM identifies and remediates misconfigurations and compliance risks
• CSPM offers monitoring and static threat detection for cloud assets
• CSPM features include risk assessments, security audits, and enforcement compliance
• CSPM integrates with other tools, like DevOps tools, to provide unified visibility and threat detection in cloud environments

What are the Benefits of CNAPP?

CNAPP is a unified platform that has multiple security capabilities. In a CNAPP, you’ll find:

• CSPM features of configuration and compliance management
• CWPP capabilities for runtime workload protection
• CIEM for identity and access management
• Proactive and reactive capabilities
• Artifact scanning, including container and image scanning
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning
• Cloud network security, including network topology mapping
• Risk detection, prioritization, and contextual analysis
• Behavior analytics and anomaly detection
• DevSecOps collaboration and collaboration features
• Software composition analysis, including software bill of materials (SBOM) creation

Other Tools to Consider

While CSPM and CNAPP are two of the most popular cloud security tools, an organization’s security policies, pipelines, and security challenges can all require different frameworks. Let’s go deeper into a few possibilities.

How is a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) Different?

Often considered CSPM’s “other half,” CWPP shifts right to focus on workload and cover the parts of the development process that CSPM does not.

CWPP protects cloud workloads like virtual machines, serverless environments, and containers. 

What about Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)?

CIEM focuses on access and identity management. In a secure cloud, CSPM manages how cloud environments are configured securely, while CIEM manages who can access them. CNAPP is a comprehensive, unified platform that combines CIEM, CSPM, and other features to secure cloud-native environments.

What is CASB and How is It Different?

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is another tool for cloud security — but in this case, it’s not typically packaged in CNAPP.

Like CSPM, CASB has a hand in managing access to cloud resources. However, CASBs secure user access to cloud applications and services. They enforce security policies by preventing data exposures, tracking user behavior, detecting unauthorized use, and verifying identity.

CSPM monitors cloud infrastructure configurations, not user behavior, in these environments. 

Organizations add CASBs when they need security in cloud applications and visibility into how their users behave in apps. Some CASB features are included in a CNAPP like Upwind, such as access control.

Upwind’s Approach Secures Your Whole Cloud

Upwind’s CNAPP leans into holistic cloud security with an emphasis on runtime and shift-right security while incorporating CSPM components to ensure comprehensive cloud infrastructure security. With real-time traffic and data information, advanced CNAPPs like Upwind can not only see the whole cloud landscape and app lifecycle, but they can also create cloud baselines by observing normal cloud activities and proactively alerting users to deviations.

Upwind prioritizes risks based on the highly individual data of a company’s own assets, ensuring comprehensive cloud security for your unique cloud environment. To learn more, book a demo today.

FAQ

Is CSPM free? Do Clouds Have a CSPM?

Some cloud services offer limited CSPM features that security teams can use for free:

• Microsoft Azure offers Azure Security Center with a free tier, with foundational posture management within Azure.
• AWS Trusted Advisor includes free security checks for best practices and configuration issues.
• Google Cloud offers basic security in the Security Command Center.

All security features in native CSPM solutions are designed primarily to secure resources on their own platforms and don’t work natively across clouds. For that reason, commercial CSPMs are a better choice for organizations with assets across multiple clouds.

Why is CSPM Not Enough?

CSPM secures cloud configurations but can’t protect all cloud assets or provide complete security for teams working in the cloud. Here are the key reasons:

1. No runtime protection. CSPM focuses on configuration issues in development, but none while running in a dynamic cloud environment.
2. No vulnerability management. CSPMs don’t secure applications running in the cloud, like container and Kubernetes security.
3. No focus on data security. CSPM doesn’t monitor sensitive data or data exfiltration.

CSPM is one layer with one focus: misconfigurations. A multilayered cloud environment requires a multilayered solution.

Can I Use CSPM and CNAPP Together?

You don’t need to. CNAPP includes CSPM functions, plus other tools to protect from security issues across different types of environments and at different stages of deployment. CNAPP is a security platform that builds on CSPM.

Do Both CSPM and CNAPP Support Multi-Cloud Environments?

Native CSPM and CNAPP providers like AWS Security Hub are natively designed to support just one cloud environment. Historically, CSPM also focused on specific cloud platforms.

However, more CSPM tools are becoming multi-cloud as organizations often adopt a multi-cloud strategy and require visibility across their cloud environments. CNAPP today also largely supports a multi-cloud environment.